"HAIR" in Sacramento one night only

2009-07-16T06:36:07Z

Peace, love, war, sex and hair -- Sacramento will have a one-night opportunity to revel in hippie counterculture at Harlow's Thursday night. "HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" will rock the nightclub in the form of a concert.

Local theater company Artistic Differences will perform musical numbers from "HAIR" as part of the company's Summer of Rock series, which kicked-off with "Tommy" at the Crest on Memorial Day. Many of the original cast members from the company's five-week run of the show in 2007 will return to sing the numbers, accompanied by a seven-piece band.

"HAIR" the musical brings to light a group of young flower children who band together as a "tribe" in the East Village of New York City during the late '60s. The story develops when one of the members of the tribe receives a draft notice and is faced with the decision to serve or rebel.

Drawn into the hippie counterculture movement and inspired by anti-war protests, young actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado wrote "HAIR" over a span of three years and introduced it to the New York stage in 1967.

The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased for $15 in advance or for $20 at the door. To purchase tickets call 916-708-3449.

Summer of Rock will continue with a one-night concert featuring numbers from "Bare" on August 13 at Harlow's.

Images provided by Artistic Differences.

Acclaimed controversial play opens for first time in California community theater, says theater company

2009-05-17T09:03:34Z

A play postponed by a New York theater company hesitant to upset the public with controversy was shown in a sold-out theater house on its opening night Friday in Sacramento. Friday night was the first performance of the controversial, one-woman play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" at the Three Penny Playhouse, presented by Sacramento theatrical company Beyond the Proscenium Productions and co-produced by the Sacramento chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Congress. The company said this is the first presentation of the play in a California community theater.

The original script was taken from the diaries and letters of Rachel Corrie—an American peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while protesting against the demolition of Palestinian homes—and edited by British actor Alan Rickman and the Guardian editor Katharine Viner. The play depicts Corrie from the time she was twelve through her time spent in Gaza as an activist.

It was scheduled to open at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2006, but as the directors of the company explained in an interview with "Democracy Now!" radio host Amy Goodman, they reconsidered after realizing the “complexity” of presenting Corrie’s story to an audience with varied beliefs.

Nick Avdienko, BPP’s artistic director and producer of the play, explained that he and BPP artistic associate Karen Nylund, director of the play, felt that it was an important piece to present to Sacramento.

Corrie’s character, played by local actress Tygar Hicks, warns the audience from the opening scene that the play is not for just any theatergoer. Indeed not. The script consists entirely of Corrie’s experiences as she describes them in her diary entries and letters to her loved ones, creating a play focused on the development of one character as she progresses from an insightful adolescent to a compassionate woman struggling to understand the atrocities happening in the real world around her.

Following her first words, the scene shifts to Corrie lying on her bed staring at the bedroom ceiling in her Olympia, Washington home as a preteen. Covering her red-painted bedroom walls are posters of Charlie Chaplin, Nirvana, Bob Marley, the Amnesty International symbol and a Salvador Dali reprint, and the audience can already sense the convictions of the young girl lying before them. Hicks depicts the young Corrie already exuding confidence and maturity, revealing someone who is beginning to examine and question her surroundings.

Before the audience’s eyes, Hicks matures from Corrie as a preteen to Corrie in middle school, and then to Corrie as a student at Evergreen State College disillusioned with society and U.S. foreign policy. Thus a rollercoaster of monologues transitioning anywhere from Corrie’s dating frustrations and her dreams about the ideal world, to mockeries of former professors, makes it unclear at times how old Corrie is supposed to be.

Some audience members appeared more engaged in Hicks’s deliverance of Corrie’s increasingly passionate theories about life and foreign policy than others; some acknowledged Corrie’s sentiments with nods, others shifted in their seats.

Sounds of whizzing planes and Middle Eastern music help to ease the audience’s transition from Corrie’s hometown to her arrival in Gaza. Amplified voice-overs of emails to Corrie from her parents guide dialogue between Corrie and her loved ones back home.

Hicks’s acting capabilities shine through the second half of her performance, as she reveals a dramatic shift from an idealist full of confidence and fervor to a soul crushed by the realities of war manifesting before her eyes.

Sound effects and music are sparse throughout the performance. Aside from a bed surrounded by scattered magazines and laundry on one side of the stage—representative of Corrie’s home—and a backpack with a laptop and journal Hicks carries to the other side of the stage representing her transport to Gaza—where there’s nothing more than a painted background, metal sheet wall and crumbled brick—there are no stage props or displays.

Hicks’ ability to engage an audience in the heart and mind of Rachel Corrie, using little theatrical accompaniment, is praiseworthy.

Nonetheless, the audience seemed to have mixed feelings following the play.

Audience member Michael Claudio said, “As well as it was done…I think that if you’re going to present a piece on an issue as complex as that, part of me feels that it’s slightly irresponsible to have it be so one-sided.”

Nylund said that along with individuals sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in Gaza, she hopes people of other perspectives will also attend the play and participate in discussions after the show.

“The only way we can get past violence is if we can start a dialogical communication between both sides of any issue,” she said.

Initially directed by Rickman at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005, productions of “My Name is Rachel Corrie” continue around the country and the world, and it won the London Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Play in 2006.

For a preview article written about the play please click here: here